From James Hardy, Belfast, UK
Richard Smyth says the growing trend of seeing our relationship with nature as a spiritual thing is a mistake. But “existential” or “mysterious” are surely better words to describe it than “spiritual”. Bertrand Russell, the great atheist philosopher, famously said: “We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.” A sense of awe and mystery is shared by all human observers of nature (10 January, p 19).
